A Pan-cancer Analysis of the Expression and Clinical Relevance of Small Nucleolar RNAs in Human Cancer.

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA; Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Key Laboratory of Environmental Health of Ministry of Education, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430030, PRC.

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA; Department of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Hubei Bioinformatics and Molecular Imaging Key Laboratory, Key Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics of the Ministry of Education, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, PRC.

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Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA.

Department of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Hubei Bioinformatics and Molecular Imaging Key Laboratory, Key Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics of the Ministry of Education, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, PRC. Electronic address: guoay@mail.hust.edu.cn.

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA; The Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth, Houston, TX 77030, USA. Electronic address: leng.han@uth.tmc.edu.

Abstract

Increasing evidence has demonstrated that small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) play important roles in tumorigenesis. We systematically investigated the expression landscape and clinical relevance of snoRNAs in >10,000 samples across 31 cancer types from The Cancer Genome Atlas. We observed overall elevated expression of snoRNAs and their ribonucleoproteins in multiple cancer types. We showed complex regulation of snoRNA expression by their host genes, copy number variation, and DNA methylation. Unsupervised clustering revealed that the snoRNA expression subtype is highly concordant with other molecular/clinical subtypes. We further identified 46 clinically relevant snoRNAs and experimentally demonstrated functional roles of SNORD46 in promoting cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. We developed a user-friendly data portal, SNORic, to benefit the research community. Our study highlights the significant roles of snoRNAs in the development and implementation of biomarkers or therapeutic targets for cancer and provides a valuable resource for cancer research.